"He had an immense self-importance: he was unable to picture a world of which he was only a typical part - a world of treachery, violence, and lust in which his shame was altogether insignificant. How often the priest had heard the same confession - Man was so limited he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much."
My thoughts on Graham Greene's Stamboul Train, also read recently, are here. Much older reviews of his A Burnt-Out Case and Journey Without Maps are here and here.
The Power and the Glory is, compared to Stamboul Train, a more mature example of Greene's fiction. It's Greene using his own voice, and it's Greene telling a story in the more concise, journalistic style that made him famous. In my opinion it's not as good as his The End of the Affair, but it definitely ranks alongside other famous works by the same author. The Power and the Glory is, moreover, often referred to as Greene's masterpiece.
The novel begins at a Mexican port where an English dentist meets an ex-priest. From there it follows this ex-priest's flight from a government intent on executing him. As the ex-priest passes in and out of danger, he comes to understand both his personal failings and the meaning of his faith.
As a character study it's unquestionably brilliant. It's been a long time since I've seen a character described so convincingly, and with such an economy of words. Greene brings both the ex-priest and rural Mexico to vivid life, and at several points I had to remind myself that I was reading a book by a British author, not a Central or South American one. Anyone who's read and loved authors like Borges, Marquez or Allende will find a great deal to like in this book, and at just over 200 pages it offers a good entry point into the literary riches of that region. In this novel you can also see the influence of the earlier Joseph Conrad on Greene, and I dare say there are echoes of Conrad's Nostromo in The Power and the Glory.
Would I recommend this book? Unequivocally. It deserves the status it's acquired, and readers of all descriptions will enjoy it. Confirmed atheists beware, however. You'll need to keep an open mind for this one.
Related Entries:
"Stamboul Train" by Graham Greene (1932)
"Suttree" by Cormac McCarthy (1979)
"Cotton" (a.k.a. "The Ballad of Lee Cotton" by Christopher Wilson (2005)
"The Help" by Kathryn Stockett (2009)
"'I dance. I'm off to Constantinople. A girl's ill in an English show there.' For a moment with the girl's hand in hers Mabel Warren felt flustered with a longing to be generous in an absurd obvious way. Why not give up the hope of keeping Janet Pardoe and invite the girl to break her contract and take Janet's place as her paid companion? 'You are so pretty,' she said aloud."
Graham Greene has been discussed here a lot, so I'll leave off the biographical details. My thoughts on his Journey Without Maps are here, and my thoughts on his A Burnt-Out Case are here. Many of his other books have been discussed in other entries, but I'll be damned if I can remember what those entries are.
...and to eliminate a lot of confusion, "Stamboul" in the title refers to Istanbul, also known as Constantinople. Thus the "Stamboul train" is none other than the famous Orient Express, which was this book's alternate title in the States. The success of Orient Express lead to an American film of the same name, and also to a British television series which used the American title. Greene hated both filmed versions of his story, and given the book's frankly homosexual characters this fact is not surprising.
In Stamboul Train several passengers aboard the Orient Express travel to Constantinople. There's an enigmatic doctor bent on restoring his reputation. There's a chorus girl bound for parts unknown. There's a Jewish merchant bent on rising above his station. Greene describes each of these characters in meticulous detail, and their individual moral failings nicely overlap as the story progresses.
It's one of Greene's earlier efforts, and doesn't quite exhibit the steady hand evident in later novels. It's good, yes, but the earlier parts of the book definitely put style over substance. By the second half it hits its stride and manages to arrive and a satisfying conclusion, but the first half is a bit of a mess.
I'd recommend this book, but only if you've read Greene's more famous novels. I like the way the author probes his characters' moral failings, and even if the ending doesn't quite satisfy it's still an engaging story.
Related Entries:
"Suttree" by Cormac McCarthy (1979)
"Cotton" (a.k.a. "The Ballad of Lee Cotton") by Christopher Wilson (2005)
"The Help" by Kathryn Stockett (2009)
"The Story of My Teeth" by Valeria Luiselli (2015)
"Suddenly the passenger found himself unable any longer not to speak. He said, 'Nor I. I suffer from nothing. I no longer know what suffering is. I have come to an end of all that too.'"
Graham Greene was an English novelist who reached his date of expiration in 1991. I have read several of his novels, and also the non-fiction Journey Without Maps.
In A Burnt-Out Case, a famous man travels to a leper colony in Africa, hoping to "retire from the world." He quickly finds that his fame has followed him to even that remote location, and complications quickly result.
I liked the book, but not as much as other books by the same author. At times it tries too hard to make a point, and certain conversations seem more like overt attempts to inject a theme into the novel, rather than natural outgrowths of a situation happening in real time. The end of the novel also feels more like a play, and one gets the feeling that Greene wasn't quite sure how to end the story.
It's not as revelatory as either Journey Without Maps or The End of the Affair, but A Burnt-Out Case is worth reading if you've already exhausted Greene's more popular novels. It bears some strong similarities to The Quiet American (a love triangle, whites living in the midst of non-whites, doomed idealists vs. equally doomed pragmatists), but it's still a good novel when taken on its own merits.
